Holiday cookies

 

I'm guilty of not making and decorating too many cookies when my daughter was younger.  I think I tried a few times but I think I never had the patience to make most of the cookies.  I remember trying and never having much luck rolling out sugar cookies.

In October my sisters friend Julie taught us how to decorate cookies with royal icing.  She made it seem so easy, much easier than I had ever done and the results were great in my opinion.  I always marveled at the smooth look of the frosting I had seen.
Julie took us through it step by step and made it so easy that even I could do it and love the results.
After our trip I decided that this Christmas I would make and decorate cookies.  First I needed to get cookies so I started looking for sugar cookie recipes and I came across a great tip that eliminated the crumbly dough I remember trying to roll out years ago.
  Roll out the dough between sheets of waxed paper or Saran wrap before you cool it.  I knew I had to try it and it worked out great.  I won’t ever struggle with cold crumbly dough again.
Flour or sugar the dough as usual, partially roll out dough, lift your paper or wrap off of the dough, flour again if needed.  Then flip the dough over, pull the paper or wrap up from the dough, flour if needed and continue rolling out. 
Once the sheets are rolled out as thick as you want them, place on a cookie sheet or other flat surface and put in the refrigerator or freezer to cool.
  Once cool, cut out cookies, bake, frost if desired and then sit back and enjoy your handiwork.
Here are some pictures of our cookie making day this past weekend.
My sister Janie showing off one of her cookies.

My sister Joanie hard at work filling in some stars.

Our Mom even got into decorating and did a great job.

My daughter, Kira filling in a star with what ended up being our favorite color, a light blue.

Me, deeply concentrating on outlining a cookie.

Some of our creations.

We had a lot of fun and I think we all decided that a spring cookie decorating day should happen. 
Are you making any holiday cookies?
June

Game time

I made a fun, funky memo board from a game board from my youth.

I remember playing Chinese Checkers with my sisters on this board.  The marbles are long gone but the game board was still in perfect condition.

I punched a couple holes in the top, ran a ribbon through it that makes a perfect hanger.
I made a few magnets with buttons that I had on hand and a fun, funky memo board is complete.

Now if I could find something equally as fun to do with some of my other game boards and pieces.

I love the bright colors and graphic elements
of this board. 
What a fun board to use to organize notes, tickets and even bills.
Happy crafting –
June
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New card listings

Looking for some unique, handmade Christmas cards?
If so check out some of my recent card listings.
I finally got around to listing a few more Christmas card sets.

I hope I'm not too late to sell a few sets.

Hopefully people are still looking for handmade cards.



Vintage look cards

 

Blue and Green Joy card



Pink and Black Joy card





Red and Green Ornament card



Happy Thanksgiving

Enjoy this lovely picture from Country Living.

I hope that you are spending Thanksgiving day giving thanks for all the wonderful people,

places and things in your life.

Happy Thanksgiving

$3 Thursday – Jar of Jolly - Ho Ho Ho

Since most people will be spending tomorrow with family and friends I thought I would post a $3 Thursday craft a day early.

I really struggled with what to call this post.  Santa’s balls – no.  Jar of Balls – no.  Jar of Ho’s – no. 

I settled on the Jar of Jolly – not near as mis-leading as the others I thought of. :)

I haven’t really started decorating for the holidays.   I really can’t bring myself to put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. 

I think Thanksgiving is too often lost in the shuffle between Halloween and Christmas, especially in the retail environment. 

I’m probably partly to blame for this, after all I did lots of Christmas shopping between Halloween and now.  At one time I was thinking that I wish there were more Christmas items out, then I quickly reminded myself that it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet.

My original inspiration for this project came from Courtney @ Red heads craft more fun and this post.  Her alphabet balls were inspired by some she saw at Ballard.  Now that I found an inexpensive supply of small balls I decided to take a more seasonal take on this idea.  And so my Jolly jar was born.

 

I started with this –
Dollar store ornaments
Craft paint
Letter stamps
Jar

Some of the hangers from the ornaments had fallen off.
I gently pulled off the rest of the hangers as I wanted the white balls. 

Sometimes when you pull off the hanger a bit of the Styrofoam comes off  but it isn’t too noticeable on the finished balls.

Next lightly coat the stamps with the paint. 

I sort of rocked the stamp onto the ball.  Be careful to not put too much pressure or you will be a big blob of paint on the ball and won’t be able to see the letters.
I stamped each ball twice.

I made half red and half green as I wanted a good mix in the jar.

I don’t really have a holiday display yet to show it to its full potential but it doesn’t look too bad on my antique  scale.

  Friday or over the weekend I'm sure I'll updated this display from fall to winter and the Jolly Jar will look a bit more at home.

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>;;>

Paper wreath

I’ve been seeing lots of great wreaths lately and it reminded me of a wreath kit I bought on clearance this summer from Oriental Trading for a couple dollars.

The kit was fairly simple, a Styrofoam wreath and ten packs of 1” x 6” double sided papers.

I grabbed some push pins, the remote and started making the wreath.

I folded the ends together and made a crease about half and inch from the end then used a pin to stick it to the wreath.  I just started on the outside of the wreath and kept adding layers all the way to the inside of the wreath.

The kit came with about 500 slips of paper, I still have about 200 left so used about 300 slips of paper and stick pins.   The pins didn’t come in the kit but I had just recently bought a box of 1,000 of them at the dollar store. 

Word to the wise… look closely at the pins in the dollar store.  About 20% of the ones in my box had blunt end or only a slightly angled end!  It made pushing them through two layers of paper a challenge to say the least.  It was a good think there were 1,000 in the box so I didn’t think twice about about throwing them away.

 

I love the color combination.

I couldn’t decide on a color of ribbon from the papers so I decided on a wide gold ribbon that I had.

Close up pictures.

This was a holiday wreath and I really like the pink, green and blue for Christmas but I think it would be a great wreath for year round as well.

What holiday or year round wreath have you been working on?
June
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